Top all-time · #71
Philip Greenspun
Personal blog · philip.greenspun.comprogrammingcareer
Philip Greenspun's personal blog at philip.greenspun.com covers programming and career. Since 2007, 424 different Hacker News readers have linked it 843 times, most often “Philip Greenspun's take on Women in Science”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 13 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his old web-building guides and essays on careers, early retirement, flying and 1990s tech. Comments call them excellent, favourites and good advice.
- Recommended for · 13 comments
- Called great, excellent, a favourite and good advice; one commenter says it stood the test of time.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Philip Greenspun's take on Women in Science54 people · 80 mentions · first linked 2007-10-31
- Why airlines tend to be unionized26 people · 37 mentions · first linked 2010-11-03
- How to Become as Rich as Bill Gates23 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2009-04-09
- What to do after you sell your company and retire23 people · 23 mentions · first linked 2007-04-23
- Greenspun's First Guide to Web Publishing (Online book link)16 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2007-03-03
- Greenspun's Second Book on Internet Applications (Online book link)15 people · 27 mentions · first linked 2007-03-03
- Managing Software Engineers15 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2007-09-28
- Money and Investing (1996)14 people · 25 mentions · first linked 2007-11-16
- /panda/12 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2018-08-30
- SQL for Web Nerds11 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2008-04-30
What Hacker News says?
I wouldn't call the Garmin G1000 a paragon of UX design though. I wish there were some serious competitors that would give the UX another try (like Avidyne), but Garmin seems to be the standard now. Philip Greenspun wrote about some of its problems (back in 2006): > In some ways this makes life more difficult for the pilot. For example, suppose that you are busily trying to fly the airplane and study an approach pla…
Comment linking /flying/avidyne-versus-garmin
on “Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds”Submitted Early Retirement (2006) as a story · 170 points
HN discussionI feel like philip greenspun deserves a mention as one of the OG's in this practice. https://philip.greenspun.com/sql/trees.html
Comment linking /sql/trees.html
on “This Page is Designed to Last”Submitted Boeing 737 MAX crash and the rejection of ridiculous data as a story · 160 points
HN discussionJimmy Carter's pioneering support for Hamas: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2024/12/29/jimmy-carters-p...
Comment linking /blog/2024/12/29/jimmy-carters-pioneering-support-for-hamas/
on “Jimmy Carter has died”Submitted Why airlines tend to be unionized as a story · 152 points
HN discussionAirline bankruptcy is a normal business activity, akin to an occasional server refresh in the data center.. It doesn't disrupt the overall airline industry, and it's not a catastrophe to a bankrupt airline. http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines
Comment linking /flying/unions-and-airlines
on “Google Fiber Plans & Pricing”Submitted Phil Greenspun debunks Malcolm Gladwell on airline safety as a story · 152 points
HN discussionTo the list of articles to read before heading for grad school, I'd add Philip Greenspun's http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science I have a summary of it here: http://bfrsblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-every-prospective-...
Comment linking /careers/women-in-science
on “Don't Call Yourself a Programmer”Submitted A 1958 UNIVAC airline reservation system as a story · 119 points
HN discussionhttps://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really lear…
Comment linking /materialism/early-retirement/
on “I am rich and have no idea what to do”Submitted Introduction to AOLserver, Part 1 (1999) as a story · 116 points
HN discussionhttp://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-co...
Comment linking /business/mobile-phone-as-home-computer
on “Intel Compute Stick”Submitted How to get your money back on a non-refundable hotel as a story · 116 points
HN discussionAnother good resource that guides one through both the philosophy (why) and technical details (how) of building a web application is Software Engineering for Internet Applications: https://philip.greenspun.com/seia/
Comment linking /seia/
on “Ask HN: What overlooked class of tools should a self-taught programmer look into”Submitted Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums as a story · 100 points
HN discussionA few decades ago, a new programming environment exploded: the web. Looking for a ridiculously useful tech stack? Look no further: HTML, HTTP architecture, SQL backend... a guide written at the time: http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/ Paul Graham also wrote about why the web was such a deal, IIRC in the Beating the Averages essay. In particular: you can use whatever tools you want and avoid deploying to client machi…
Comment linking /panda/
on “Ask HN: What overlooked class of tools should a self-taught programmer look into”Submitted Tips for Startup Companies (2006) as a story · 98 points
HN discussion> I think you could fairly easily talk someone through landing The bad news is that it is 10/28 (east-west) and the wind was reported from the north at 11 knots gusting 17. KPBI 101553Z 02011G17KT 10SM SCT042 SCT046 26/15 A student pilot with 20 hours of training probably wouldn’t have been signed off by his/her/zir/their instructor to operate in that kind of crosswind. From: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2022/0…
Comment linking /blog/2022/05/10/a-hero-flies-the-cessna-caravan-to-palm-beach/
on “Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated”Submitted Unions and Airlines (2010) as a story · 94 points
HN discussionPhilip Greenspun has a great review of Netscape LiveWire from the time. https://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/livewire.html You can see that the current JavaScript tooling complains are nothing new under the sun: So what used to be a few keystrokes in Emacs or Netscape Gold now requires three steps: edit the .html file recompile the .web file restart the LiveWire app from the appmgr
Comment linking /wtr/livewire.html
on “Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)”Submitted How to Become as Rich as Bill Gates as a story · 90 points
HN discussionBy what definition is Bill Gates "self made?" He had a million-dollar trust fund going into life, which let him take risks and exploit opportunities that others could not have. http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ I think you do justice no favors by disregarding the microsoft employees (and acquisitions) that did the overwhelming majority of work to earn that wealth, not Bill Gates. Sometimes in violation of law, and som…
Comment linking /bg/
on “Bill Gates takes part in Reddit's Secret Santa”Submitted Facebook pay cuts for remote employees who move prove that labor market rigged? as a story · 80 points
HN discussionApache (and mod_perl) was thread safe by being multi-process, single threaded. You were always limited by how many perl interpreters could fit in RAM simultaneously. Then came the era of the Java app server (Weblogic and WebSphere). Everyone has mostly forgotten AOLserver (and TCL!). Almost everyone of that generation was influenced to use a RDBMS as a backend by Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing which came…
Comment linking /panda/
on “Space Jam's 1996 website is still alive”Submitted Professionalism for Software Engineers (2000) as a story · 79 points
HN discussionCan't do anything about it now but getting that PhD may be the most costly decision you made: https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/ scroll down to the phrase: THIS IS YOUR EDUCATION, THIS IS YOUR SALARY If I were you I'd be tempted to rewrite my PhD as a multi-year "special project". Reason is that hiring a PhD is controversial unless you're a university or a research division of a corporation. In contrast, the CS/M…
Comment linking /careers/
on “AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is”Submitted How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates as a story · 77 points
HN discussionPhilip Greenspun became a millionaire at 37. He wrote about his experience and provided some good advices (IMO): http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ . EDIT: Forgot to say - Congratulations!
Comment linking /materialism/early-retirement/
on “Ask HN: What to do after $8M (all cash, post tax) exit?”Submitted Tcl for Web Nerds (2011) as a story · 75 points
HN discussion
